Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in the debate on the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne.
My first reaction, as I listened to the throne speech, was to wonder what kind of a bubble we are living in here in Ottawa. The speech was completely unreal. We came back from the parliamentary break having worked hard in our constituencies, where people told us about their real problems, such as the softwood lumber crisis, for example.
Thousands of jobs in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario have disappeared. Both the workers and the industry representatives were expecting that there would be new measures announced in the Speech from the Throne that would give them the means to get through the crisis and hang on until the final judgment. We won one case yesterday, but it will probably be 6 to 9 months before we are done.
There was no mention of all this in the throne speech, no offer to extend the transitional measures to deal with the softwood lumber crisis, for example. These measures expire on March 31 and it is impossible to extend the deadline for the cases that are under consideration but could not be finally settled. We need a second phase. There is nothing in the throne speech about that.
Another real-life problem people back home have been talking about is the mad cow crisis. Milk producers used to sell their cull cows—cows that no longer produce milk—for their meat. Later, they found themselves in a strange situation, where, because one sick cow was found in western Canada and another in the United States, the market was completely paralyzed. On this matter the federal government has remained completely inflexible and has offered clearly inadequate programs.
The crisis is not over, and today producers are saddled with heavy debt. They have been urged on numerous occasions to invest in their businesses, told that attractive market opportunities would be created. Then, when the mad cow crisis struck, the federal government was unable to implement a tracking system in time to avoid a Canada-wide crisis.
Instead of allowing the former Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food to say that he was going to treat all animals in Canada the same, there could have been a tracking system in place in order to know whether the problem was in Alberta or Saskatchewan. As a result, exports from there could have been banned. During the European mad cow crisis, the entire European market was not closed. Only those actually involved were affected, and their geographical area targeted.
We were expecting some measures for the producers to be included in the throne speech. This is a concrete problem in all of our ridings. But no, the same great desire for maintaining a high profile, for visibility achieved through interference in areas of provincial jurisdiction, was evident. Reference was made, for instance, to day care, an area in which Quebec is in the lead role. The federal government wants to interfere in this, as well as in the community sector, which is not its place.
Why do we have a throne speech that is so far divorced from reality? Because we have a federal system in which the federal government is after a degree of visibility that its areas of jurisdiction do not lend to it, yet it does not shoulder its responsibilities. It puts visibility before responsibility.
That is far from funny, when we are hearing that the Canadian army is under-equipped, that our military personnel do not have what they need. That is a federal jurisdiction. Still, they are announcing piecemeal funding yet again. Today we hear there is another $5 billion surplus this year.
The bafflegab that propels this government also fuelled the Speech from the Throne. Last fall, we were told there no longer was surpluses, that it would take great pains to provide the provinces with the $2 billion for health and that it would be impossible to provide more. Today, the papers reported that $5 billion is being put on the table. Is this supposed to go unnoticed and unexplained amidst the sponsorship scandal? People are not blind. The reality is very clear to see.
With respect to the Speech from the Throne, I feel like bursting the bubble, so that the people who make decisions in government and write these speeches know what is really going on and see the real problems that need to be resolved.
Seniors are another group that has been making representations to us on a regular basis. They are going through a difficult situation. For the past few years, their old age pension has been only partially indexed. That means that over a three-year period, they were denied a quarter, a half, or a full per cent. Now these people who receive small incomes have lost their purchasing power.
Imagine what would happen if we, in this House, did not receive indexation. Or imagine this happening in an entirely different sector. We would rise to say this is unacceptable. Senior citizens have not been given a voice. There should have been something in the throne speech about fully indexing pensions and providing retroactive indexation to those who have lost their purchasing power.
The price of drugs has increased in the past few years. Seniors have such specific needs that their shopping carts are quite different from the average citizen's. The price increase for some products has exceeded inflation. There should be something about that in the throne speech.
Why not have said there was going to be retroactive indexing of the guaranteed income supplement? Some 270,000 Canadians have been left in the cold for many years by not being paid what they are owed. All hon. members must have heard of such cases in their ridings in recent months because the Bloc Quebecois kicked up such a fuss that the department responded. I can give more examples of these situations.
For example, three weeks ago I learned that someone had sent the form three months ago, but had not yet heard anything. We checked and got this person registered. However, the payments are not retroactive.
This is strange, because companies that have their head offices in Barbados got a tax break, as we discussed recently. The ships, the companies that belong to the Prime Minister, to his family, were able to benefit from a retroactive measure to save taxes. It is strange to see that such benefit is provided to the current Prime Minister, to his family, to an industry through tax havens, but not to the elderly who would really need a break.
We are not talking about surplus or excess money. We are talking about money that people absolutely need. Why is the throne speech silent on this issue? Why does the federal government only propose measures that have no real impact, that do not reflect the daily concerns of people, that have nothing to do with the challenges that the public expects the government to meet?
All this, not to mention what we are finding out about the sponsorship scandal these days, generates cynicism in our society. The Bloc Quebecois has asked 441 questions on this issue. We are not talking about one, two, ten or a hundred questions, but about 441 questions to finally get the government to say that, in light of the Auditor General's report, something will have to be done.
Why is it that no minister, no Liberal member has stood up in this House or in public and said, “We must thoroughly examine these files. We must clean things up. We must put things back in order”.
The government even delayed the tabling of the Auditor General's report, which was scheduled for November. The government postponed it to early February 2004 to make sure that the election will be so close that things will quickly move on; also, the announcement of a public inquiry will obviate the need to provide explanations. It is fine to have an independent public inquiry, but we must ensure that it is truly independent. We must also ensure that the inquiry can be conducted quickly.
In the end, there will be a political price to pay. The public simply cannot still feel that this government can continue to lead Canada. The public will have to pass a very harsh judgment. There are often cases where concrete involvement is not obvious, but here it is very clear.
I did a radio interview a little while ago with people from my riding. The host and I were saying that the $100 million that flowed to the buddies with the advertising agencies, for sponsorships, would have made a heck of a big investment in route 185, a highway in my riding that has killed 100 people in 10 years.
The government could have been proud to make an investment like that. Instead, the money was deliberately poured out. The inquiry will have to make things very clear, because those people did not do that for nothing.
There was a Minister of Public Works who was also responsible for political organizing. There were at least five federal agencies involved in this operation and there were many people, members of Parliament, ministers in this very government, who are still deeply involved.
In conclusion, this is a throne speech that has nothing to do with the type of reality we would like to see in a throne speech. The general public is seriously fed up and thinks the politicians are not serious at all. We need to tell them that within the broad class known as politicians, there is the Liberal government that has done these deeds and there are members who rose in this House, including the Bloc Quebecois, 441 times, to ask for a public inquiry, and to ask for details about this affair.
And we hope that the government has received the message because, if it has not, I predict that the public will be sending the message very directly in the next election.